Three steps to take today if you have been impacted by the Equifax data breach

Note: This post has been updated. We have added our tips for immediate steps victims (or potential victims) of the Equifax data breach can take. In this updated version of our tips, we have added information for individuals in the UK who want to check and see if they have been affected by the breach, and additional information for US consumers. We do encourage people impacted by the breach to take advantage of free credit monitoring services offered, but we also understand that not everyone has decided to sign up. These tips will help protect you with or without credit monitoring, and we especially encourage those of you who have not signed up for credit monitoring to take these three steps.

Now, to the tips.

There are three immediate steps you can take on your own to begin to address the potential risks the Equifax data breach poses. These steps are apart from signing up with Equifax for credit monitoring. Here are the steps, with explanations below. Information for Canadian and UK residents is included where available:

If you have a Social Security Number, set up your online account for your Social Security records. From there, you can then block electronic access to your account if needed. (SIN for Canadians, NINO for UK residents.)

Get a free copy of your credit report from the free service, AnnualCreditReport.com. (Free or low cost reports from Equifax available for Canadian and UK residents.)

Sign up for a Social Security Administration My Social Security account

The Social Security Administration allows individuals with an SSN to sign up and monitor their Social Security records. It is smart to pro-actively sign up for an account. You want to get that account locked into your name, with your passwords and email associated with it. It makes it much harder for an ID thief to sign up in your place.

After you have an account, if you are concerned about identity theft, you can block electronic access to your Social Security record so that it is much less vulnerable to ID thieves or other snooping. This is a simple but powerful step to take.

Put a fraud alert on your financial accounts

If you are a victim of the Equifax breach, which is a serious breach, it is a good idea to be proactive and ask your financial institution to place a fraud alert, sometimes called a red flag alert, on your financial account. You can set fraud alerts for:

Bank accounts

Savings accounts

Credit card accounts

and other financial services accounts.

To find out how to set a fraud alert for your financial institution, you can call your bank or financial service provider and simply ask them to place a fraud alert. Some banks call this a “flash alert,” some call it a “red flag,” some call it a “fraud alert.” It is often helpful to talk to a customer support professional at the financial institution so that you can explain you want to put an alert on all of your accounts, but not close them.

Note that calling to replace credit cards that have been breached is different from placing a red flag alert or fraud alert on your accounts. The fraud alert is not supposed to close your account; it is supposed to flag your account to let bank or other financial institution employees know that they need to be certain it is you when they take any action or accept phone call instructions regarding your accounts.

Get a copy of your credit bureau reports (In the US, get a free copy of your credit bureau reports from AnnualCreditReport.com)

For US residents, Congress has mandated that individuals can get one free copy of their credit bureau reports once each year. Now is the right time to get that done. You can go online to the web site AnnualCreditReport.com, or you can call and make the request. The idea is to keep the reports that you get now as a baseline, so you have something to compare future reports to. Having a baseline report will assist you in spotting new or unusual activity.

If you have not reviewed your credit report before, it may be a lot of information to digest at first. You might not have realized how much information credit bureaus collect about you. There are tools for helping you understand how to read your credit report. Here are two: Credit Report Anatomy, from Creditcards.com, and TransUnion Credit Report User Guide from credit bureau TransUnion.

Canadian residents can request a free credit report from Equifax. UK residents can request a low-cost “Statutory Credit Report” from Equifax for £2.

These three steps are not the only steps you can take to reduce your risk from the Equifax data breach. As of October, 2017, Equifax has announced that more than 15 million individuals in the UK have been affected by the breach. Equifax UK has provided a phone number for UK residents:

And one further updated tip: Even though it is now past tax season, for 2018, the FTC recommends that you complete and file your taxes early. This is to prevent scammers from using your identity information to file early and receive your refund. Here is the FTC’s Equifax tipsheet: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/09/equifax-data-breach-what-do

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.